Product Description

Most races involve horses or cards, but in Elfenland players control young elves, who must traverse their fantasy land with all sorts of strange transportation such as giant pigs and unicorns. Each player must visit every city on the map and seek to find the best route for the modes of transportation that they use, while attempting to hinder the others in this light, interactive game. Players place tokens on routes with restrictions because of terrain and then use cards to attempt to finish quicker than the other players.

Product Reviews

Few recent boardgames took on the status of cult classic as this
game has. First, Alan Moon published it in a different form with a
limited number of editions available. Word of mouth an cyberspace had
this as a closet masterpiece to be enjoyed by a few lucky collectors.
Then it won the 1997 game of the year. Despite this, I never saw the
game played or even on sale at any game store.

Well, being such a fan of Alan Moon's games, I put it on my Christmas
list and was glad to get it. I first played it as a two player games.
It looked like a good game, but I was never sure if I was playing it
well or messing up. There was a lot of thinking and planning. (Not to
mention a cutthroat obstacle token). Luck did have a significant part.

The second time I played was with three players, and I really got the
feeling I was involved in a great game. It is playable, has a good
part luck and strategy and has a high "fun factor".

The more I've played it, the more I like it. It is slowly creeping to
be a favorite. For the artwork, production and gameplay I have to give
it the highest rating. Like Modern Art and Duel of Ages, I can see
that a game can be great, but not everyone's cup of tea.

Elfenland is a wonderful game of strategy, player interaction, and
a little luck. When I first saw this game I was not real sure what
to think, but when I opened the box I was first impressed by the
quality that was inside. My favorite part of a new game though is
the ability to be able to get into the game and teach others to
play. Rules are straightforward with the main areas of question
highlighted. Needless to say my family enjoys this game and I am
sure yours will too.

Elfenland is a beautifully produced journey game by Alan Moon
(Ticket to Ride, Santa Fe Rails, Diamant and many more).
Elfenland is a gorgeous game with wonderful stylised artwork,
good quality components and one of the best map/boards in any
game I have ever seen. The quality of the components makes
Elfenland a real joy to play, and the Elf boots (the player pieces)
add more than you might think to the feel of the game. The
cards that come with Elfenland are some the highest quality
cards I’ve used, the tiles are cute and easy to manipulate, the
tokens are nice and made of wood and the box fits everything
away very neatly and nicely.

In Elfenland the players compete to be the Elf that manages to
visit the most Elfen cities in the land. The game runs through
many phases every turn, players are dealt cards depicting the
various methods of transport, players must then select a series
of tiles (again depicting various types of transport) that must be
placed on the planned routes. The cards represent (in my mind)
the currency required by the various transporters while the
tokens represent the availability of that type of transport on a
particular route.

In order for a player to move from one city to the next they must
use the cards to pay for the transport type available on the route
they wish to use. Players take turn laying transport tokens on
the routes, the key to this, and the element that adds all the fun
and tension, is that only one token may be placed per route and
if someone lays their token there first you must either work with
it or find a new way.
Once all the tokens have been laid, players move their Elfs along
the various paths by paying the appropriate type and amount of
cards to each of the transport types. This game plays very well
with any number of players up to four, and though it can be
played by as many as six my own opinion is that the games
works best with four.

One very good addition to the basic game is the inclusion of city
cards, using this advanced rule each player will be dealt a city
card at the beginning of the game, at the end of the game the
player’s score will be the amount of cities they have visited minus
the minimum amount of roads between the Elf and their city.
This advanced rule compounds the problem posed by the base
game, adds a heap of tension and means that players really
need to plan well from the beginning. It also means that
the ‘Trouble Counters’ (counters placed that make routes more
expensive to use), if well placed, can cause some serious
problems for your or your opponent’s plans.

There are some great variants available online, including a great
one for a two player game, in which the two players play the
game on half the board.
Elfenland is a very attractive game that appeals aesthetically to
children and adults, it is also one of those rare games, that once
grasped, can be played across such age gaps, and provides
enough fun to engage young gamers, and enough tension and
thought to keep older gamers at the table too. All in all Elfenland
is a great game I am happy to own, it has a style unmatched in
my game collection and is always fun to play.

In 1992, Alan Moon released the game Elfenroads through
his company White
Wind. The production run was limited to 1200 copies. Alan's commitment on
his limited edition games was that he would never reproduce a game without
changing it in some way to ensure the investment of collectors. As the
years passed since the release of Elfenroads, it became one of the Holy
Grails of game collectors. Copies showed up on the Internet once in a
while and fetched triple the original price or higher. People were dying
to try the game that many considered one of the best games of all time.
There was much rejoicing when Amigo announced that it was doing a
simplified version of Elfenroads (as Elfenland). This year at Nuremburg
the game was finally released.

As a bit of background, I was a member of Alan's White Wind club and got a
copy of Elfenroads a short time after it was released. I felt then and
feel now that it is one of the best games I've ever played. The interplay
of the different systems made it a very enjoyable game. Even my parents
(who aren't big game players) love the game, and bought a copy. However,
the one drawback was that the game could run pretty long. The game took at
least two hours, probably longer depending on your group's tendencies to
sit and think everything out, kibitz, etc. Elfenland was specifically
designed to streamline the game, one whole element was removed (money was
used in the original to auction movement counters), and the number of turns
was cut from eight to four.

In Elfenland, the idea is to travel around the map (beautifully rendered
by the fantabulous Doris Matthäus) and visit as many of the twenty cities
depicted as possible as part of a coming of age trial for young elves. The
map shows a network of interconnected cities with varied terrain (woods,
grasslands, mountains, rivers, desert and lakes). There is a set of
transportation counters in a number of different types, and a deck of cards
which depict the same transportation. The counters and cards are used in
combination to travel around the board. There is also a set of markers in
six colors and pawns (actually little elven boots) in those same colors.

The markers (which for some reason Amigo produced as little cylinders that
roll all over rather than the ubiquitous painted wooden cubes) are placed
on the map (one in each city for each player in the game), and the boots
are placed on the starting city. Each player also receives a trouble
counter which increases the cost of moving along a particular route and a
card depicting one of the cities on the board as their secret destination
(there is one card for each of the cities on the outer edges of the board).
If a player reaches all of the cities by the end of the third round, then
they win, otherwise the fourth round is played out and the destinations are
checked. The distance from your destination is subtracted from the total
number of cities you have visited and the player with the highest total
wins.

From here, the rounds are identical in nature. Each player gets a number
of cards (the number of cards is a bit in dispute, but I'll get to that
later), and one transport counter face down. Five counters are then placed
face up and the players choose one at a time (either one of the face up
counters or one from the face down pool) until everyone has chosen three.
Each player in turn may then place one counter at a time on the board or
pass. The counters go on the paths connecting the cities and there may
only be one counter between any two cities (aside from a trouble counter
which is in addition to any transport counter). All players may use any of
the transport counters on the board, provided they have the necessary
cards. Once all players have passed in turn, the placing ends and the
players play cards to move around the board. This is the heart of the
game. Different transport methods are better in different areas and some
can't even go in some areas (for example, the giant pig can only go through
grasslands or woods, a unicorn only costs one card to use in the woods and
mountains, but two in the desert). Trouble counters increase the number of
cards needed by one. A player plays cards and moves as far as they like,
picking up their markers to show that they have reached the different
cities visited. If a player doesn't have the necessary cards for a
particular leg of their journey, they can opt to caravan (provided a
counter exists on the route), by discarding any three cards from their
hand. After all players have moved, the counters are removed from the
board and the cards are reshuffled. You may only hold four cards and one
transport counter from turn to turn. Any extras are turned in to be reused
on subsequent turns. Any trouble counters played on the turn are removed
from the game. After this, the next turn commences with the dealing of
cards and so on, and that's basically the game.

The allure of Elfenland (and Elfenroads) is in solving the traveling
salesman problem that is constructed each turn by the interaction of the
players. You must try to be as efficient as possible in moving around the
board, and all your planning can go out the window when someone plays a
giant pig on a piece of your route when you don't have a pig card in your
hand. In my mind, Elfenland has highlighted the route solving portion of
Elfenroads in the streamlining process. Instead of auctioning counters,
and choosing cards you're forced to deal with what cards you've gotten and
work with those rather than tailoring both your cards and counters
together and going head to head with someone else to try to get that one
dragon that came up. I feel that the original game is still worth playing
due to the increased player control, but that the trade-off in time (since
the new one clocks in at an hour to an hour and a half) probably means that
Elfenland will come off the shelf a lot more than Elfenroads did. I
wouldn't be unhappy playing Elfenland, but I know that occasionally I'd
like to have the other to play.

One of things I had to deal with in writing this review was differing
rules sets. Alan Moon posted his version of the rules on the net, and it
turns out that they are slightly different from the rules that Amigo
published. The main difference is that in the Amigo rules, you would
receive enough cards to fill your hand back to eight, and in Alan's rules
you would get eight cards no matter what. I played the game both ways, and
it does make a difference in feel. When only filling to eight cards, I
felt more pressure to make things work out right and burn through my cards
(especially if they didn't look like they'd fit with the terrain I would
end up in). Alan's rules gave me a lot more flexibility, and everyone made
it to all of their cities or were only one short rather than up to two
cities short for the Amigo version. The other change Amigo made was to
make crossing both lakes cost the same (rather than one costing twice as
much). I'm not sure of the effect of that since I didn't try the Amigo
version, but I have a feeling it wouldn't make a big difference one way or
the other.

All in all, I feel that Elfenland does a good job in taking the core of
what made Elfenroads compelling and making a good game that takes half the
time to play. For people who never got a chance to play (or even see)
Elfenroads, it's a fine game and well worth having in your collection.
Alan even provided the information people would need to try playing
Elfenroads with the Elfenland set in his posted rules, and with a little
DIY, you'd have both the games for the price of one.

Elfenland is a wonderfully unique game by designer Alan R. Moon. This game is a revision
of a long-time favorite of mine--Elfenroads. If I had any concerns about Elfenroads, it
was the length of time it took to play it--rarely less than 3 hours. But with Elfenland
there is no such problem, as it plays in 45-75 minutes. In Elfenland, your goal is for
your elf visit as many (of 20) cities as possible in the course of 4 turns. The modes of
transportation available include giant pigs, troll wagons, elf cycles, unicorns, magic
clouds, dragons and rafts. As you might guess, each has different capabilities and some
are far better than others over the different terrain involved--including open roads,
forest paths, desert, mountain trails, rivers and lakes. And you must hope you can get the
right combination of movement cards and transportation counters to allow the moves you want
to make. Meanwhile, your opponents are trying to accomplish the same goals with sometimes
conflicting, and sometimes complimentary, methods. Everyone gets one "trouble" counter as
well, which allows a particularly nasty move at least once a game. This is a highly
engaging game of strategic planning, with a modest amount of luck thrown in to spice it up.
The game plays well with 2-6 players--probably 9 years old and up. This is an all-time
classic game; fun for the whole family, unique in concept, with great artwork. You've got
a real treat in store if you've yet to get this one for your collection.